So Truth proclaims: her awful voice I hear: With many a folemn pause it Sowly meets my ear. "Attend, ye Sons of Men; attend, and say, Does not enough of my refulgent ray Break thro' the veil of your mortality ? Say, does not reafon in this form defcry Unnumber'd, nameless giories, that furpass The Angel's floating pomp, the Seraph's glowing grace? Shall then your earth-born daughters vie With me? Shall fhe, whofe brightest eye But emulates the diamond's blaze, Whose cheeks but mock the peach's bloom, Whofe melting voice the warbling woodlark's lays; Vie with these charms einpyreal? The poor worm Shall prove her contest vain. Life's little day Shall pass, and she is gone: while I appear Flush'd with the bloom of youth through Heaven's eternal year. Know, mortals, know, ere first ye sprung, I fhone amid the heavenly throng; And taught Archangels their triumphant fong. Pleas'd I furvey'd bright nature's gradual birth, Saw the tall pine afpiring pierce the fky, Laft, Man arofe, erect in youthful grace, And, as he rose, the high beheft was given, "Should reign protectress of the godlike Youth:" Thus the Almighty spake: he spake,and call'd me Truth. I CRUELTY TO BRUTES. BY COWPER. Would not enter on my lift of friends (Though grac'd with polifh'd manners and fine fer fe Yet wanting fenfibility) the man Who needlessly fets foot upon a worm. An inadvertant ftep may crufh the fnail The creeping vermin, loathfome to the fight, And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes A vifitor unwelcome into fcenes Sacred to neatness and repofe, th' alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die. Not fo when held within their proper bounds By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand To check them. But, alas! none fooner fhoots, Than cruelty, most devilish of them all. And righteous limitation of its act By which Heav'n moves in pard'ning guilty man; Diftinguifh'd much by reason, and still more From creatures that exift but for our fake, No more on human help, than we on theirs. That man's attainments in his own concerns, We could not teach, and muft despair to learn. And ufeful quality, and virtue too Rarely exemplified among ourselves. PARADISE RESTORED. BY THE SAME. HE groans of nature in this nether world, THE Which Heav'n has heard for ages, have an end. Foretold by prophets, and by poets sung, Whofe fire was kindled at the prophets' lamp, The time of reft, the promised fabbath comes. Six thousand years of forrow have well nigh Fulfilled their tardy and difaftrous course Over a finful world. And what remains Of this tempeftuous state of human things, Is merely as the working of a fea Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest. For he whofe car the winds are, and the clouds |